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By the end of Jacques Audiard's modern-day prison epic A Prophet, an old king -- a gruff Corsican lifer named Cesar Luciana -- has fallen from his throne as the incarcerated ruler of a French penitentiary. After years of "protecting" inmates, Luciana, played by the great Niels Arestrup, finds his power usurped by a young, illiterate prisoner named Malik. But the real culprit is the deep well of pride that he has subsisted on for most of his life.
Luciana, as both character and symbol, remains crucial to the almost Shakespearean heft of A Prophet, but Audiard's film is primarily focused on Malik, a naïve French-Arab, and his ascension through the criminal ranks. In a revelatory debut performance, 28-year-old newcomer Tahar Rahim conveys an unceasing urgency and sense of discovery in the hungry, young prisoner that matches Audiard's thrilling handheld vision of power in violent transition. The birth of a master criminal has rarely felt so naturally portrayed through sheer physicality and craft.
Only 19 when he arrives, Malik receives his dark baptism by slitting the throat of a Muslim snitch (Hichem Yacoubi) for Luciana; the Muslim, in the film's most nagging cliché, haunts him at night. Allowed 12-hour leaves from the prison due to good behavior, the young prisoner becomes Luciana's proxy on a number of power plays on the outside. Luciana believes he has broken Malik. Meanwhile, the young man picks up basic Corsican and begins to deal hashish; he even learns how to read with help from Ryad (a fantastic Adel Bencheriff), a Muslim who later makes Malik godfather to his son.
The wise Ryad takes pride in lineage, race, and religion. For Malik, however, these are tools of manipulation, and the film is brutally frank in its treatment of them as extensions of masculinity. Audiard, who co-wrote the screenplay with Thomas Bidegain, portrays basic penal corruption as a class system not unlike capitalism; a state of being based on calculation and strategy rather than a house of horrors. In the densely exhibited tête-à-tête between Luciana and Malik, the guards and the warden are nothing more than criminal associates serving at the behest of the most prominent gang. In Luciana's powerful, nearly wordless final scene, Malik has aligned himself with the Muslims and leaves the old man to fend for himself, drained of any sense of importance and stunned by his own foolishness. The film could have easily been retitled An Education.
A Prophet is the fourth film by the Parisian-born Audiard; though I'm reluctant to call it his strongest, it is by every possible measure his most ambitious and most fully engrossing. The filmmaker dabbles in many prison-film clichés, both American and foreign, but he also flips a few of them, not least of which is his replacement of a done-wrong and vengeful hero with a porn-loving, dope-smoking schemer with a thirst for knowledge. (It comes as little surprise that A Prophet was initially the favorite to win the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival before losing to Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon, its chief rival for the foreign-language Oscar.) In past films, Malik might have rebelled and ended a martyr or escaped with a new, clean lease on life. A Prophet ends with Malik walking out of prison with his godson and Ryad's widow, followed by a caravan of followers who will serve him, learn from him and perhaps, one day, challenge his prophecy.
Aka Un prophète.
Luciana, as both character and symbol, remains crucial to the almost Shakespearean heft of A Prophet, but Audiard's film is primarily focused on Malik, a naïve French-Arab, and his ascension through the criminal ranks. In a revelatory debut performance, 28-year-old newcomer Tahar Rahim conveys an unceasing urgency and sense of discovery in the hungry, young prisoner that matches Audiard's thrilling handheld vision of power in violent transition. The birth of a master criminal has rarely felt so naturally portrayed through sheer physicality and craft.
Only 19 when he arrives, Malik receives his dark baptism by slitting the throat of a Muslim snitch (Hichem Yacoubi) for Luciana; the Muslim, in the film's most nagging cliché, haunts him at night. Allowed 12-hour leaves from the prison due to good behavior, the young prisoner becomes Luciana's proxy on a number of power plays on the outside. Luciana believes he has broken Malik. Meanwhile, the young man picks up basic Corsican and begins to deal hashish; he even learns how to read with help from Ryad (a fantastic Adel Bencheriff), a Muslim who later makes Malik godfather to his son.
The wise Ryad takes pride in lineage, race, and religion. For Malik, however, these are tools of manipulation, and the film is brutally frank in its treatment of them as extensions of masculinity. Audiard, who co-wrote the screenplay with Thomas Bidegain, portrays basic penal corruption as a class system not unlike capitalism; a state of being based on calculation and strategy rather than a house of horrors. In the densely exhibited tête-à-tête between Luciana and Malik, the guards and the warden are nothing more than criminal associates serving at the behest of the most prominent gang. In Luciana's powerful, nearly wordless final scene, Malik has aligned himself with the Muslims and leaves the old man to fend for himself, drained of any sense of importance and stunned by his own foolishness. The film could have easily been retitled An Education.
A Prophet is the fourth film by the Parisian-born Audiard; though I'm reluctant to call it his strongest, it is by every possible measure his most ambitious and most fully engrossing. The filmmaker dabbles in many prison-film clichés, both American and foreign, but he also flips a few of them, not least of which is his replacement of a done-wrong and vengeful hero with a porn-loving, dope-smoking schemer with a thirst for knowledge. (It comes as little surprise that A Prophet was initially the favorite to win the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival before losing to Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon, its chief rival for the foreign-language Oscar.) In past films, Malik might have rebelled and ended a martyr or escaped with a new, clean lease on life. A Prophet ends with Malik walking out of prison with his godson and Ryad's widow, followed by a caravan of followers who will serve him, learn from him and perhaps, one day, challenge his prophecy.
Aka Un prophète.
